ng,
without being choked and strangled as he is now. Thinks I, when I feel
the victuals going--'

'Now, we'll begin,' interrupted Mr. Torkingham, his mind returning to
this world again on concluding his search for a hymn.

Thereupon the racket of chair-legs on the floor signified that they were
settling into their seats,--a disturbance which Swithin took advantage of
by going on tiptoe across the floor above, and putting sheets of paper
over knot-holes in the boarding at points where carpet was lacking, that
his lamp-light might not shine down. The absence of a ceiling beneath
rendered his position virtually that of one suspended in the same
apartment.

The parson announced the tune, and his voice burst forth with 'Onward,
Christian soldiers!' in notes of rigid cheerfulness.

In this start, however, he was joined only by the girls and boys, the men
furnishing but an accompaniment of ahas and hems. Mr. Torkingham
stopped, and Sammy Blore spoke,--

'Beg your pardon, sir,--if you'll deal mild with us a moment. What with
the wind and walking, my throat's as rough as a grater; and not knowing
you were going to hit up that minute, I hadn't hawked, and I don't think
Hezzy and Nat had, either,--had ye, souls?'

'I hadn't got thorough ready, that's true,' said Hezekiah.

'Quite right of you, then, to speak,' said Mr. Torkingham. 'Don't mind
explaining; we are here for practice. Now clear your throats, then, and
at it again.'

There was a noise as of atmospheric hoes and scrapers, and the bass
contingent at last got under way with a time of its own:

'Honwerd, Christen sojers!'

'Ah, that's where we are so defective--the pronunciation,' interrupted
the parson. 'Now repeat after me: "On-ward, Christ-ian, sol-diers."'

The choir repeated like an exaggerative echo: 'On-wed, Chris-ting, sol-
jaws!'

'Better!' said the parson, in the strenuously sanguine tones of a man who
got his living by discovering a bright side in things where it was not
very perceptible to other people. 'But it should not be given with quite
so extreme an accent; or we may be called affected by other parishes.
And, Nathaniel Chapman, there's a jauntiness in your manner of singing
which is not quite becoming. Why don't you sing more earnestly?'

'My conscience won't let me, sir. They say every man for himself: but,
thank God, I'm not so mean as to lessen old fokes' chances by being
earnest at my time o' life, and they so much nearer the